The Diet I Recommend Most Often...And How You Can Easily Try It.

Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield. There's one diet that I recommend more often than any other diet on the face of the planet, and I'm going to tell you about it in today's episode. In this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

Fitness show, one part of your immune system, depending on your diagnosis, is working overtime. And some herbs and supplements stimulate one part of the immune system. So if it's the part that's already working overtime for you, it's going to make your symptoms worse. But if it's the part that's not working overtime, it can sometimes help you balance out. And what happens is there's a few, like guard cells circulating your immune system that know which foods were a problem for you. And so that when you reintroduce them very carefully, very scientifically, if it's a food that is a problem for you, your body will let you know very quickly.

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental. He is Ben Greenfield. Power, speed, mobility, balance, whatever it is for you, that's the natural movement. Get out there. When you look at all the studies done, studies that have shown the greatest efficacy, all the information you need in one place right here, right now on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield here. And it seems like probably about once a month, possibly more frequently than that, on a podcast or in a comment section of an article I've written, I'm recommending that somebody, whether that somebody is having skin issues like acne or eczema or gut pain or brain fog or food allergies or intolerance or constipation or any other signs of immune system issues or inflammation issues. Seems like I'm recommending that they try this thing called the autoimmune diet. The autoimmune diet. And the problem, it seems, is that this diet, typically, it's meant to be followed for kind of like a shorter period of time in most cases until things are kind of healed up. It can be confusing when it comes to whether you really need to use it to heal an issue, which foods are allowed and which ones aren't, how to transition off of it back into normal eating, how long you need to stay on it and what you do after you've finished up a cycle of this diet. So I decided to get somebody who just wrote a book about this diet, this handy little Book that literally takes like, you know, take you like an hour or two to read, I would imagine. And her name is Eileen Laird. She just wrote a simple guide to the Paleo autoimmune protocol. Now, I read this last week, and it's exactly what it promises. Super simple. It's written like a conversation between friends, and it contains pretty much everything in a tiny little book that can easily fit in your purse or your backpack. And so who is Eileen? She's a writer. She's got a podcast called the Phoenix Helix Podcast. She writes for Paleo magazine, which, if you haven't read that magazine yet, even if you're not Paleo, which I'm not, by the way, you can still get a lot of benefit out of that magazine. I write for it as well, and I'll link to that in the show Notes, but she's actually worked quite a bit with reversing joint pain and rheumatoid arthritis with this diet. She's got a blog called Phoenix Helix, and I'll link to that in the show Notes, where she's got recipes and research and stories about the autoimmune diet and autoimmunity. And the column that she writes in Paleo magazine is called Autoimmune Answers. So, that being said, Eileen, I have a quick question for you before we jump in. Where does the word or the phrase Phoenix Helix come from?

Yeah, I'm glad you asked. So I have rheumatoid arthritis, and it hit my life like a wrecking ball back in 2012. I was super fit. I was hiking 10 miles for fun on the weekends. I was working as a deep tissue massage therapist. And within six months of rheumatoid arthritis hitting my body, I was limping across the living room and I didn't have the strength to. To wash dishes. So how I describe it is I felt like I was knocked down so hard that I didn't know if I would ever rise again. And I just needed images of hope and the Phoenix. Of course, rising from the ashes is something that really spoke to me. And the Paleo autoimmune protocol is a big part of the way I was able to do that. So I think anyone with autoimmune disease, that's severe, and I think most of them, I don't know that there's such a thing as a mild one knows what I'm talking about. It's just their. Their symptoms might be different than mine based on their diagnosis, but it can just really dramatically impact your life. And everyone's Looking for hope. So that's the Phoenix. And then the helix just symbolizes our DNA and that we are more than our DNA. So I know that you talk about that all the time. So I'm a big fan of epigenetics, the ability to affect the expression of our genes and that we aren't a slave to them. And we don't have to lose hope just because we have some that set us up for vulnerability.

It all makes sense now. Okay, Phoenix Helix. I like it. It rolls off the tongue quite nicely.

Thank you.

It's got a good ring to it. Okay, so let's start here for folks, what exactly is the autoimmune Paleo diet?

So it's a diet and lifestyle program designed to reduce inflammation body wide, calm down an overactive immune system, and give your body a chance to heal. So that's kind of the broad view. The details are it's an elimination diet at its core. So it removes a lot of the foods that are known to be inflammation triggers for people in general. That's like the Paleo foods. And then it also removes more foods that are known to sometimes be a problem for people with autoimmune disease specifically. And so your audience, are they pretty familiar with what Paleo is?

Yeah, they're pretty familiar with what Paleo is. And in podcast number 350 of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show, I talked about autoimmunity and how the body tends to, like, mount an inflammatory reaction against itself in response to certain. Certain environmental factors or food factors. Right. Like mold or fungus or certain foods to which you might be intolerant or allergic. And so, yeah, folks are familiar with what the Paleo diet is. But this diet, it's different than the Paleo diet.

Right, right, right. So it's harder. I'll just be upfront about that.

Because you eliminate more foods.

Yeah, but it's like you had mentioned early on, that's not meant to last forever. And so you start with Paleo, but then you also remove. I know some people who are Paleo are kind of primal Paleo, so they eat high quality dairy. On the autoimmune protocol, you can't have any dairy at all. You can't even have ghee. It also remains.

And I know you're about to launch into a bunch of other things that you potentially can't have. But to my understanding, the reason is that these proteins, the proteins that you're eliminating on an autoimmune protocol are the proteins that your body would mount an inflammatory reaction against, potentially.

So the Beauty of an elimination diet is you remove all of these potential immune system and inflammation triggers for a minimum of 30 days. And that gives your body a chance to calm down. The chronic inflammatory response can go away. You start to feel a little bit better. You get a good baseline for improvements. And what happens is there's a few, like, guard cells circulating your immune system that know which foods were a problem for you. And so that when you reintroduce them very carefully, very scientifically, your body, if it's a food that is a problem for you, your body will let you know very quickly, okay? And if it's. And if it's not a problem for you, then you can get that food back in your diet. And so it's different for each person.

Why 30 days? Is there science behind that or is that just like a random number?

There is science behind it. I think some elimination diets say 21 days is the minimum. I know the AIP has always been 30 days, and I don't know if that's just because Rob Wolf kind of started promoting that, and he's big on the 30 day. You know, see how you feel after 30 days of trying something that's good for you. It's definitely 21 days it takes for your immune system to calm down.

Okay.

So if you don't do it for a full 21 days. Days, it's not long enough.

That's what I was curious about, if it was related to gastrointestinal mucosal growth. Because your epithelial cells are constantly turning over, as you know, in your intestine. And from everything that I've seen, it's somewhere in the four to eight week range that it takes for complete epithelial cell turnover in your intestine, for your gut to basically heal more or less or to reinvent itself. That was why I suspected that it might be 30 days or approximately four weeks. And I know a lot of the autoimmune protocols I've seen tend to range from 4 up to 12 weeks or so. But I was just curious if you had any other ideas about the whole follow it for 30 days type of recommendation.

That makes complete sense to me, what you're talking about. I know there's an immune system component, too, because Sarah Ballantyne has talked about that before where she says there's different types of immune cells and some have longer lifespans than others. And so it gives. It gives a bunch of them a chance to frankly die and go away.

Right?

And then only, and only the guards are circulating okay.

And these immune cells that die and go away would be the immune cells that contain the. The memory, so to speak, or the programming to attack the body's own tissue, because they can't differentiate between the body's own tissue and that thing that you might be allergic to, like the dairy proteins that are in butter, for example.

Yeah. So it gives like the attackers a chance to die and then the guards still have the memory. So if you eat that food again, they'll let you know that that's a problem for you.

Got it.

Does that make sense?

Yep, it makes perfect sense. So you were talking about how unlike the paleo diet, which would allow for something like grass fed butter, for example, the autoimmune protocol would actually only allow for something like ghee, which contains none of the dairy proteins.

Actually, it doesn't even allow ghee.

Oh, really? Not even ghee?

Yeah, really. And I'm glad you brought that up because one thing I've learned. So I've been doing this for like in this community for about four years now, and I noticed a number of people were reacting to ghee, which doesn't make any sense based on what we know about ghee. And what I've learned is just the autoimmune body is just different than any other body. And so trace. Trace. Trace proteins are enough to trigger an autoimmune body. Whereas someone else who just maybe gets a little sinus congestion with regular dairy and they do great with ghee. For someone with autoimmune disease, what I have found is it's interesting. Some people can have dairy, like no problem. And if they can have ghee, they can usually have butter, high fat cream, and sometimes even cheese.

Okay.

And then, and then others like me who react negatively to other forms of dairy, I can't even have ghee. It causes me to flare.

What are some other foods that would be more. I hate to use the word aloud because it sounds so religious, but what would be examples of some other foods that, that would be on the paleo diet, but that wouldn't be on an autoimmune protocol?

Sure. So nightshades are a big group. So that's things like potatoes, tomatoes, eggplants, bell peppers, cayenne peppers, and a few other little herbs like ashwagandha. So that goes out for at least temporarily. Eggs are out and nuts and seeds. And a good way to look at it is just think of them as temporarily excluded. And I think of the autoimmune protocol as a great self experime your body that's really what it is. So you're removing these foods for a while. Hopefully you'll start to feel better. So that lets you know. Okay, some of these foods are a problem for me specifically. And then the reintroduction process lets you figure out which ones those are. And then you can expand your diet again and still feel good.

All right. Lest we lose all of our listeners just now with you excluding everything from nuts and seeds to nitrogen. Walk me through a sample daily meal plan. Walk me through, like, what you would eat if you're following the gold standard version of this program for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and maybe throw a snack in there so people can kind of wrap their head around this.

Sure. So you're really focusing on. It's not weird foods at all. It's like really high quality meat, seafood, vegetables, some fruits and healthy fats. So you start the day with a lot of people love to do skillet breakfast with some leftovers maybe from the night before. So it might be some shredded meat and some sweet potatoes and some greens mixed in with maybe some lovely coconut oil and some seasonings that are allowed on the eip. That's a little tricky with seasonings, but there are like herbs, generally speaking, are allowed. A lot of the spices are out temporarily, but you do get some of those back. But so you maybe throw in a bunch of Italian herbs or Greek herbs for some flavor. I love starting the day with soup. And I know that can sound strange in the United States, but like a huge portion of the world starts their day with soup.

And I think soup at a lot of good Japanese hotels, Right?

Exactly. And it's like a nourishing, really satiating, gentle way to start the day. So I make a big batch of homemade chicken and vegetable soup every week, and it feeds my husband and myself for five days so I don't have to cook in the morning. So I just heat it up. So that's a really nice way to do that. And I've actually been able to reintroduce eggs successfully and I still prefer the soup. So that's an example of AIP foods sometimes taste even better than what you're used to once you change your habit.

I want to hear about lunch and dinner here in a second as well. But let's say for an athlete, somebody who's really physically active, following the autoimmune protocol, do you find that they just have to step back? Because let's face it, soup is not that nutrient dense. There are some people getting up in the morning and hammering through, like 90 minute workouts for people like that. Is the general recommendation to step back when you're doing an autoimmune protocol and just start doing yoga and easy workouts and stuff like that, or are there more nutrient dense options than say, soup for something like breakfast?

Yeah, I think it really depends on the person. Like why are you doing the autoimmune protocol and where are you at in your health? So I know that a lot of times if an athlete maybe, because you mentioned a bunch of people who maybe could benefit from the autoimmune protocol, who maybe don't have autoimmune disease, but they're experiencing symptoms that are related to leaky gut and increased inflammation. And it is true that if you can take a break and just step back while you're doing the autoimmune protocol and relax more and do a lower key exercise during that time, that gives your body a greater chance to heal. And I do find people in that situation, if you don't have autoimmune disease, you're more likely to be able to reintroduce almost everything after 30 to 60 days because your body just needed, needed a break. Yeah, if that makes sense.

It does make sense. And in many cases, like what I'll do when someone comes to me with say like adrenal fatigue, a lot of times you tend to see a lot of immune system issues go hand in hand with that. A lot of excessive inflammatory issues go hand in hand with that. You know, the Ironman triathlete, the crossfitter, the Spartan racer, who needs that one, two combo. And so what I'll generally do is I'll put somebody on yoga, super slow lifting, easy swimming, maybe a little bit of breath work, some nice walks in the sunshine, and a lot of mobility work like foam rolling and all sorts of things that tend to keep that busy high achiever athletes, fitness enthusiast's mind and body occupied without them actually having to charge down the highway pounding the pavement and putting more stress on the body. But then I'll combine something like that with a recommendation to use an elimination diet just to allow the body to completely clean up. And some folks will dish out the hundreds or the thousands of dollars for really complete laboratory testing like Cyrex lab tests, which I personally consider to be the gold standard in food allergy testing. But some people don't have the time or the resources to specifically like laser target and identify the specific foods that they might need to eliminate. And so kind of like covering all the bases, right. With something like this elimination protocol. I Find especially in folks who need that 30 day healing period or who need an off season or who need to push the reboot button on the body. This tends to be a very good program to go hand in hand with exercise recovery and not based off of what launched our discussion into this, which was soup. High, high amounts of exercise, if that makes sense.

Yeah, it totally does. And the autoimmune protocol is supposed to have a lifestyle piece anyway, so you are supposed to be prioritizing sleep and stress management and getting out in the sun. And so everything you just described on that exercise protocol would be perfect for just about anyone doing it. I love it. Sounds beautiful, actually.

Awesome. Okay, so let's move on past breakfast where we've got the option of things like soup. Now, did you say eggs, by the way?

No, I said I was able to reintroduce eggs and so I could have those every day if I wanted to, but I actually prefer the soup. And then you did. I'll say, like, so say someone is an athlete doing this anyway though, even though that's maybe not always the best idea, but some people are going to do what they're going to do. You can definitely, you know, pile up that skillet, you know, do if you want nutrient density, definitely add some organ meats. I'm a huge fan of organ meats. And lots of starchy vegetables I know are really helpful for people who are athletes as well as the greens. So just. You mean like and then extra fat.

For the calor beets or parsnips or things like that?

Yeah, those are great choices. Butternut squash, sweet potatoes, plantains.

Gotcha. How about for lunch?

For lunch, I love a big salad because it's just something you can whip together without having to cook and, you know, grabbing some meat from a leftover meal or canned salmon or canned tuna. Lots of vegetables for dressing, I tend to go pretty simple. I love olive oil vinaigrettes and again, just some herbs. So I can whip that up in a small amount of time and it can be pretty filling and depending on your energy needs, you know, you just make a bigger salad and add a lot more protein.

Now, in terms of the, of the salad, one thing I wanted to ask you because not to put you on the spot, but I've been doing this a lot because I have a salad like that almost every day for lunch, right. Like tons of greens and avocados. And I'm even careful with doing too many of the nightshades, right. Like the tomatoes, the potatoes, the eggplants. I don't completely eliminate them. But I do know that even in people who don't have immune system issues, they, they can cause a little bit of inflammation. But I have been using lately insect based proteins like, well, specifically crickets. Do you know where those would fall into the spectrum?

They are allowed.

Interesting.

So you can absolutely have crickets and they're considered organ meat. Isn't that funny? I was talking to Terry Walls and she said anytime you eat the whole animal, you're eating their organs at the same time. So, so it's kind of a, it's an incredible nutrient dense food choice.

Isn't it cool? Yeah, I've been eating a lot of these just like organic whole roasted crickets that I order and I'll try and put a link in the show notes. Oh, and by the way, for people who are listening in, I'll also have a link to Eileen's book as well as the other things we discuss. If you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.comAIP that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com AIP now, how about moving past lunch? What would one do for snacks during the day?

You mentioned avocados. I think they're just wonderful. I get a huge energy boost when I eat those. Those are one of my favorites. Another simple snack I like is toasting coconut flakes. A lot of people on the autoimmune protocol, since we mentioned a little bit about organ meats, really get into pates. And that's something you can kind of have a bunch of single servings in your fridge or freezer and just grab with some, you know, either plantain chips or like carrot sticks for a quick dip. And that's a huge nutrient dense energy boost. A lot of people feel a real zing.

It sounds like my kids lunch that I packed for them this morning. My wife's out of town right now, so I've been packing lunches for my kids and they're, you know, I sent them off to school with one of the, one of the pemmican bars, right. Which is like rendered fat and meat, which I. That that would be acceptable. Right. On an, on an autoimmune protocol.

That's a good question. So there are a couple of convenience foods on the AIP that make us very excited. So the epic bison bacon cranberry bar is AIP friendly and they also have, I believe it's a pork bacon bar that's AIP friendly and a beef apple bacon bar that's AIP friendly. So those are Pemmican bars, aren't they?

Well, yeah, they have some pemmican in them, but the ones that I give my kids, it's pretty much just like rendered fat, fat beef and sea salt. It's from the US Wellness Meats is where I order these from, just because.

Oh, that would be fine.

They're literally just like tubes of fat. My kids love them and they keep them satiated for a long time, so I throw those in. And then I also. They have these little stainless steel lunch boxes. Right. So it's very hypoallergenic and there's no plastics. And I'll generally do for them carrot sticks, some rice crackers, a bunch of avocado chunks, some type of meat, and then pemmican for a snack. And so as you're describing this, I'm realizing that I'm kind of packing my children for school an autoimmune friendly lunch, even though they don't necessarily.

Yeah, I was just thinking arthritis.

Yeah, it actually is. Oh, and there's also typically I'll throw in some kind of ferment in there.

Right.

Like sauerkraut or pickles or something like that. Yeah.

The only thing that would be different for someone on the autoimmune protocol is just replace the rice crackers with like plantain chips or sweet potato chips. But otherwise that's an AIP lunch.

Okay, gotcha. So. So rice is something that you wouldn't want to include on an autoimmune paleo diet.

Not during the elimination period, but a lot of people, myself included, are able to reintroduce that later.

Okay, gotcha. And then what about for dinner?

So dinner I like, you know, wide variety. I do like to cook enough that I have leftovers, so that's important. When you're on the autoimmune protocol, there is a lot of cooking, so it's nice to make it easy on yourself and do big batches. But I host a recipe roundtable on my blog every week where bloggers link up about an average of 15 to 20 new recipes a week to keep people from being in a rut. But so for me, it varies the recommendations. Definitely you want to eat some seafood for the omega 3 fatty acids. So salmon, halibut, some good high quality seafood a few times a week if you can. Organ meats a couple times a week if you can. But you can also do things like meatloaves and roast chicken. I love the slow cooker for an easy meal for roasts and stews, things like that. And the autoimmune protocol is also really big on vegetables. So every meal, lots of vegetables, and your body just loves those, all those nutrients.

Now, when you're talking about the omega 3 fatty acids, what about algae like spirulina and chlorella and stuff like that that a lot of vegans or vegetarians will use as a source of omega 3s or DHA?

What's a little tricky for that is if you have autoimmune disease, anything that can stimulate the immune system can be tricky, depending on which way it stimul and those things. The algaes can have immune system stimulating properties. So it's not recommended during the elimination period, but after that you can kind of test it out like so for autoimmune disease. And you've probably, if you had a show, I'm sure you talked about it. But there's the th1, th2. It's like your body, one part of your immune system, depending on your diagnosis, is working overtime. And some herbs and supplements stimulate one part of the immune system. So if it's the part that's already working overtime for you, it's going to make your symptoms worse. But if it's the part that's not working over time, it can sometimes help you balance out. So that's a good experiment for the future, but I wouldn't recommend it during the elimination.

Okay, got it. So there are a few specifics that you get into in the book that I want to dive into. The first would be something that I use and that I was interested to see that you weren't a big fan of. And that's stevia. So I'm one of those guys that I don't use a lot of it, but I have a little bottle of like dark chocolate stevia that I'll toss sometimes into like a little bit of coffee or into a smoothie or something like that to give it a chocolatey flavor without the sugar. But you talk about how you're not a fan of stevia. Can you explain why?

Yeah, and I should say that Sarah Ballantine is kind of in charge of the autoimmune protocol. And so she's the one who did the research onto this. And I am just kind of following her guidance. So she said that the stevia has. The chemicals that make it sweet are similar to hormones in terms of their structure and they can cause hormone shifts in the body. And so people with autoimmune disease, we are crazily sensitive to hormone shifts. It's also interrelated to the immune system like for me, I have to be actually really careful with the vitamin D supplements because this may be too much information. But if I take too much, like, it makes me skip a period for three months. And that's crazy because it's a hormone, but it's not a sex hormone. But in my body, it can throw things off. And so Sarah's concern with stevia was that if it has a hormone effect on someone's body, it might interfere with their symptoms. And her theory in general is you can't cheat sugar like she would. Rather people occasionally indulge in some raw honey or maple syrup in small quantities than kind of get hooked on stevia on any kind of regular basis. So she recommends removing it during the elimination period. But people could try that during reintroductions. She doesn't like it for herself, but I know some people, they really love their stevia. So I think you can just again, n equals 1, test that on yourself, but not during the elimination period.

Yeah. The main argument I've seen against stevia when it comes to the hormonal argument is the effect on insulin and the subsequent response by the HPA axis, meaning that a lot of people will get stevia induced hypoglycemia, where they'll taste stevia, a non caloric based sugar source, but you still get this dump of cortisol and adrenaline and insulin. And a lot of times because your body does not have sugar in the bloodstream, but you're telling it that there's something sweet, that adrenaline and cortisol is supposed to mobilize sugar from liver glycogen and muscle glycogen stores to bring your blood glucose up, up. And what happens is in many cases after that you get like this hypoglycemic drop. Now, that doesn't seem to happen to me. It's probably just because I, you know, I'm moving so freaking much and I'm very insulin sensitive and, you know, I don't seem to have those issues. But I, I would think that in people who are struggling with something like adrenal fatigue or who have, you know, issues with adrenaline or cortisol, it could be an issue. It's really interesting.

Yeah. And you're right that the adrenal fatigue almost goes hand in hand with a lot of autoimmune diseases because it's just exhausting to be under that kind of attack.

Yeah, yeah. And stevia, by the way, it's a glycoside. And I do know that glycosides can be very similar in chemical structure to hormones. So, yeah, I'm reticent to give up my dark chocolate stevia. I really am.

I understand.

What about other things like xylitol or erythritol or these other or non caloric based sweeteners?

None of those are allowed for those reasons. You were saying in terms of how the body responds to those. And there's even. And again, I think you know more about this than I do, but I was under the impression that some of those other ones feed bad bacteria in our gut on top of everything.

Yeah. If you have like small intestine bacterial overgrowth or you have, I believe like yeast or fungus or candida, even sugar alcohols can present an issue in the same way that wine or beer can be an issue if you tend to have gut problems like that. So, yeah, unfortunately, you just have to retrain the western palate. Right. To not have to have sweet things.

Exactly. And I think it happens. I mean, I know it's not easy, but it absolutely happens. And fruit tastes sweeter and you just don't crave it as much. At least that's been my experience.

Well, you can have, I mean, I noticed as a snack that you have in the book, for example, you have fresh berries with coconut whipped cream. So you can do things like berries and fruits.

Absolutely.

Okay, gotcha.

Absolutely. You don't wanna binge on it where you're having like 10 a day, but absolutely, I'd say a few servings a day is fine and delicious. And berries are so good for you.

Yeah. So another thing that you mention in the book is liver, which you already mentioned, of course, a little bit earlier in the podcast as well. I get this question a lot. I'm curious what you think about it, but the liver is a detoxificant, right? It's one of the body's filters. So by eating liver, wouldn't you theoretically be also eating a lot of toxins? Like you upregulated your liver intake on something like an autoimmune protocol, would you not introduce yourself to more toxins?

It makes sense that people think that, but it's not true. So where the body stores the toxins is in the fat primarily, and the liver is filled with all of the nutrients we need to detoxify. So that's one of the reasons it's so recommended on the autoimmune protocol is we do want to safely detoxify our body and give our body the nutrition it needs to do so. And liver is just a powerhouse for doing that. If you want to watch out for toxins. You, if you're, that's why I guess if you can't afford it, you know, organic meats are ideal. If you can't afford it, go with lean meats. If you're eating conventional meats.

Okay. So it's, it's really the fats in the meats. And if you're eating non organic or, you know, you, for example, find yourself in a situation where you're not eating like a grass fed, organic, either organ meat or regular meat, you would want to go for as low fat as possible because fat is where the toxins are going to be stored.

Yeah, exactly. And if you're eating high quality organic grass fed meat, that fat is actually really healthy. But yeah, in a conventional animal, not so healthy. And my understanding is the same is true for the bones. So if you're making bone broth, which is recommended on the autoimmune protocol, that's a good place to invest some of your money in organic.

Okay. So the liver processes toxins, but it doesn't store toxins is basically what it comes down to. Alright, gotcha. That's a very important clarification because I know a lot of people get concerned about organ meats and toxins. Another thing, speaking of detoxification, you actually talk about during the autoimmune protocol, gentle ways to detox the body. You talk about three gentle ways to detox the body. Can you get into those?

Absolutely. So Epsom salt baths are one of my favorites and dry skin brushing is another. And if you have access to a sauna, that was the third one I mentioned. There's some other ones that I didn't put in the book, like clay masks and clay foot baths. But the idea is to support the body's ability to detox without pushing it so hard that it's too much at once. And the beautiful thing about the autoimmune protocol, if you're making nutrient dense choices, the nutrients themselves are naturally like chelating and detoxifying for the body. But it's nice to have these ways to help the body let it out. So like in a sauna, if you're sweating it out, that gets lots of things out of the body. My understanding, everything from heavy metals to pharmaceuticals to plastics. So that's a wonderful thing. Same thing with the clay, the Epsom salts. I believe it's both the sulfur and the magnesium that are helpful. And then added bonus of the Epsom salts is the magnesium that a lot of us don't get enough of. And Anytime we're under stress, that gets depleted. And autoimmune disease is really stressful. So you kind of get good bang for your buck. And if you do it before bed, it helps you sleep, which is good for your body. So that's one of my favorites for sure.

Okay, gotcha. Yeah, the Epsom salts, that was actually something prior to reading your book I wasn't familiar with, was the fact that you actually can get a sulfate release, which is a lot of people use glutathione as a detoxificant, but you get a sulfur introduced into the body in the same way that you would if you were taking glutathione or eating sulfur rich vegetables like broccoli or cauliflower or garlic or onions or something like that. When you do Epsom salts or magnesium salts bath, which I suppose is why.

It'S a wonderful thing.

It's probably why the giant hot springs that I like to go to in Montana smells. My kids say it smells like a giant fart just because of all the sulfur in it. But that's actually a very good way to, to detox the body or at least introduce a lot of detoxification based sulfates into the body. And then you talked about dry skin brushing for increasing blood flow and lymph in the body. And I'm curious, just for people who haven't done that before, what exactly does dry skin brushing consist of? What do you need for it and how do you go about doing it?

You can probably go to Amazon and just type in dry skin brush and one will come up. You want a brush with a long enough handle that you can reach your entire body. And it's a soft, soft bristle. So it's not going to scratch your skin, but it's going to stimulate your skin. And what you do is you basically brush towards your heart. So if you're reaching down for your legs, you start at your feet and kind of go up your body. Same with your arms. And from your back, you're going to go from the back around to the front of the body. And yeah, the lymph vessels are directly underneath the skin. And so it does a little gentle stimulation to them to get them pumping a little bit more strongly in the right direction. And lymph drainage therapy is a wonderful form of bodywork. If you can ever find anyone who does that.

What'd you call it?

But it's called lymph drainage therapy. That's actually one of the things I do in my day job and I love it, but it's hard to find someone who knows how to do it. And so dry skin brushing is like a home technique. It's like a mild version of the same thing.

Okay, gotcha. You know what's kind of funny is my wife does dry skin brushing. I do not. But I think that I get a lot of the similar effects because I have this 10 acre obstacle course on my land that I run through once a week. So it's typically on a Friday or a Saturday. I do this obstacle course and it involves running through branches and getting whipped by branches. And a lot of times I'm just in a short and T shirt or shorts and no shirt. And there's these giant logs that you climb over and you're just scraping and literally brushing your entire body head to toe as you're going over these logs and rocks and walls. And I finish up and my skin, it's almost like I. I've kind of removed the top layer of skin without, for the most part, bleeding and opening up wounds or anything like that. But it's really interesting in that once I finish that up and I'll do a cold shower, even a magnesium bath, my skin feels different. And I suspect that I might be. Or maybe I'm just fooling myself. I suspect that I might be getting a wild man's version of dry skin brushing when I'm doing this.

I think you are. That sounds really cool.

At least that's my theory and I'm sticking to it. There you go. Okay, question that I have you mentioned that you can't use nightshades and obviously a lot of spices. Right. Like I mentioned that I'm careful with nightshades, but I do cayenne pepper. I love cayenne pepper or red hot chili flakes on my food. I don't think that those are allowed on an autoimmune protocol. But how would one go about making food interesting, making food spicy or a little bit more peppy if they can't do nightshades?

Yeah, it's a really good question because it's a huge loss in the kitchen when you first go on the autoimmune protocol, especially if you're used to those kinds of spicy foods. So there's four ways you can add heat to your food that's AIP friendly. So one is fresh ginger. It's one of my favorites. The more finely you grate it, the more juice gets released and therefore stronger both the flavor and the heat. And what you want to do, like a little cayenne goes a long way Right. If you're not on the autoimmune protocol with these things, on the autoimmune protocol, you gotta think the opposite way. Like, the more the merrier. You know, if you want a lot of heat, just do a lot of ginger. Same thing with garlic. The finer you mince it, the more heat you get along with that flavor. So be really generous with your garlic. Horseradish you can make. If you get access to, like, fresh horseradish root, you just pop it into a food processor with a little bit of water, shred it up, and what happens is it starts releasing the chemical that makes it spicy. And the longer you let that release, the hotter it gets. So you get to decide for yourself how hot it will be. Because as soon as you taste it and it's just hot enough for you, you add a little white wine vinegar, and that stops the enzyme process. So you can make some pretty insanely hot horseradish that way. Cool. And then wasabi, which I think if anyone is into sushi, you know, they know wasabi.

I would imagine if you get wasabi, you'd have to find it without many fillers and things like that.

Absolutely. So. And it's. Yeah, you got to be the label reader. There's one online called Sushisonic that seems to be just wasabi and nothing else. And people have told me that's a good one.

Okay, cool. I'll link to that one in the. In the show notes for folks. So we've basically got ginger, we've got horseradish, we've got wasabi, as three good ways to introduce flavor to foods.

Yeah, heat especially as well as flavor.

And then what about garlic?

Yes, garlic. Same thing. I love garlic. And the finer you mince it, the more heat it's going to have. And then a little trick for garlic is the allicin, which is the medicinal part of garlic, gets released within the first 10 minutes that it's cut. But if you throw it in a pan immediately, it stops getting released. So anytime you're putting garlic in a food, if you just chop that up first and let it sit on the cutting board for 10 minutes, it'll be more medicinal for you than if you throw it in the pan right away.

Interesting. All sorts of cool little tips here. Okay, so we've got this concept, concept that you follow this diet or a minimum of 30 days as you heal your gut. And I would imagine that you're looking for things like joint pain to begin to diminish or gut pain to start to go away. But Obviously there comes a certain period of time when you may want to just have a tomato or begin to introduce whatever grass fed butter or start to eat some of these foods that might be allowed on a paleo diet or really healthy diet that, that aren't really a part of an autoimmune protocol. How would you transition back to normal eating? Meaning, is there a specific order in which you reintroduce foods? Do you choose dairy first and wheat after that? How do you exactly go about getting off the diet? I guess after you've been on it?

Great question. So the first thing is to know when you're ready. And that's going to be different for each person. So some people, like you said, you want to look for an improvement in your physical symptoms. You need to have at least enough improvement to give you a base baseline during reintroductions. Because if you haven't, if you don't feel any better after 30 days, then that's too soon for you. Most people are going to feel better within a few months though. And the other thing to pay attention to is the psychology of it. For some people, like elimination diets aren't hard, which amazes me. But I've talked to people who just are like, no biggie, restrictions aren't a problem. And then there are people like me who feel more and more rebellion the longer I'm on them. So you want to not like just go off crazy and eat everything at once because then you've kind of destroyed the experiment and instead you want to get information. That's really what this is about. So when you're ready for reintroductions, you do want to pick one food at a time. And how it goes is, and I'll tell you like which order to pick in a minute. But the process for reintroductions is you say you picked, let's say, ghee. So say you made some mashed cauliflower and you added some ghee to it. So you would just have a little, little tiny taste of the mashed cauliflower just to make sure you don't have like an allergic reaction right away. Then you would have a full serving. And then you wait three days and see what your body does. And if your body does nothing, then you go ahead and have ghee on maybe your meals every day for about five days just to make sure there's no cumulative or mild response you missed. And again, if your body does nothing, then ghee's back in your diet and you're feeling good. But if you say had the mashed cauliflower with the ghee. And then within 12, anywhere within that three day window, you had an increase in autoimmune symptoms or digestive symptoms, or the gut brain is big. So some people have psychology symptoms. Then you know that ghee, at least for now, is an inflammation trigger for you. So that's kind of the reintroduction process. And in terms of which foods to pick first, you want to start with the foods least allergenic before the most allergenic. So if we pick the dairy category, ghee is the one you start with. And from there you'd go up to butter and high fat, Basically choosing things.

In the order in which they would have the most amount of those proteins in them.

Exactly. And so for eggs, same thing, egg yolks. That's where the nutrition is anyway. So you'd start with egg yolks by themselves. And then if that went well, then you would try whole eggs rather than jumping straight to whole eggs. Some other spices are eliminated on the autoimmune protocol. The seed based spices are, and most people get those back. So I'd recommend people try those before, like jumping to cayenne, for example, on the spices.

Okay. Okay, got it. And then when, when you're reintroducing these foods, if you, if you tend to have a reaction, you would just back off that particular food and keep it out, or would you just go back to a complete, strict autoimmune protocol because that's a sign you're not fully healing?

No, because. No, you don't. Like, if you successfully reintroduce some foods, you don't need to take those out again because you've learned that they're not a problem for you. You just want to drop the one that is a problem and then wait till your body calms down before trying another one, though. Okay, so if you're flaring from, say, eggs didn't go well, you don't want to the next day try nuts if you're still feeling bad, because then you won't be able to tell.

Okay.

You want to wait till that passes.

That makes sense. All right, cool. And you've got a full list of, like, foods and reintroduction protocols and everything in this book. It actually is a really good, handy little guide. And like I mentioned, especially if you're listening in and you need to, like, fix adrenal fatigue or you want to push the reboot button on your body, this is the diet that I find myself recommending most frequently when it comes to everything from recovering from stomach issues to overtraining, et cetera, especially when paired hand in hand with, you know, like Eileen said, a very kind of of restorative exercise protocol. So it's called A Simple Guide to the Paleo Autoimmune Protocol. If you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com AIP I'll link to everything that Eileen and I talked about, from crickets to magnesium to wasabi to her book and beyond. Along with her website, Phoenix Helix, she's also got a podcast by the same name. So I will give you all that stuff over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com AIP and Eileen, I want to thank you for coming on the show today and sharing this stuff with us and writing this fantastic, handy little book.

It was a huge honor to be on your show. I'm a big fan of your podcast, so thank you for inviting me.

Awesome. Cool. Well, folks, this is Ben Greenfield and Eileen Laird signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have a healthy week. You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.

Sam.